My Life in Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins was an early inspiration for Andrew. It Emphasized direct marketing at a time when advertising was very brand-driven.Claude Hopkins invented coupons leveraging an interesting strategy:Gave coupons to newspapers to get ahead of the demand curve – consumers would be angry if the store didn’t have the product the coupon promised. He believes the principles of marketing durably persist over time, they just use different mediums and technologies.

Andrew Chen Early Inspirations

Andrew did daily journaling, wanted to find ‘the secret of Silicon Valley’ – what made this machine work? His biggest finding = “Network Effects“You need users to make a product work, network effects are the results of positively connecting people through technology which organically makes that technology better.Metcalfe’s law is wrong – The value of network effects does have a limit, it eventually gets to a point of supply that is difficult to navigate and has an increased number of ‘trolls’ or illegitimate users

Writing & Silicon Valley’s Foundation: Network Effects

Twitch started as ‘JustinTV’ named after the founder, Justin Kan. Every day he would live to stream his life. Expanded to allow anybody to stream but the ‘everyday life’ content wasn’t gaining traction.Pivoted towards gaming and a creator-supported model rather than a viewership model. Incentives to create content drastically improve when the creator has clear income opportunity rather than creating for views/engagement. The market wasn’t huge for gaming at the time but the engagement and participation was extremely high within the niche

Twitch

Twitch solves the original sin of the internet, which is having an advertising-based system…We decided to go with banner ads overpaying each other online

Many games (like Axie Infinity) are a natural way to ease casual people into crypto.Roblox is an example of what the next generation of social networks could look like. Multiplayer and deep network effects embedded in the VR/AR metaverse experience. You work, organize, and gather in this digital reality. Empowering reward and ownership to these realities will be the next interesting layer to this technology. Ready Player One is a movie that captivates what the metaverse could be but is ultimately dystopian under monopolistic control. Andrew hopes the metaverse is a genre rather than a company.

Games and the Metaverse 

-- What types of questions does Andrew ask to understand a founder’s growth mindset?<ul><li>What happens when you internet search for something?</li><li>How would you 10x a current startup?</li></ul>-- What are the right metrics to use?Understand what people actually use your product for – define your high-value users. Pick your strategy first (product vision); Identity what retains and generates business value; Set metrics to validate if your strategy has causation. -- What are common errors among founders?Brand marketing is overused in customer acquisition.

Startup Q&A

Tim and Andrew discuss how networks effects are the foundation of many successful tech companies and how to pick the right metrics for your startups.

Andrew Chen — Metaverse, Metrics, and Meerkats | Brought to you by 80,000 Hours free career advice for high impact and doing good in the world, Wealthfront automated investing, and Helix Sleep premium mattresses. More on all three below.Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he invests in consumer technology, including social, marketplace, entertainment, and gaming experiences. Today, Andrew serves on the boards of All Day Kitchens, Clubhouse, Envoy, Hipcamp, Maven, Reforge, Sandbox VR, Singularity 6, Sleeper, Snackpass, and Substack.Andrew is a prolific writer and leading voice on mobile, metrics, and user growth. For the past decade, he’s covered the topic on AndrewChen.com. He is the author of The Cold Start Problem, a book exploring how new startups are launched. He is also a board member and instructor at Reforge, which offers selective, growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering.Please enjoy!This episode is brought to you by 80,000 Hours! You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career. That’s 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. They add up and are one of your biggest opportunities, if not the biggest opportunity, to make a positive impact on the world. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical advice I’ve seen and heard come from 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit co-founded by Will MacAskill, an Oxford philosopher and a popular past guest on this podcast.If you’re looking to make a big change to your direction, address pressing global problems from your current job, or if you’re just starting out or maybe starting a new chapter and not sure which path to pursue, 80,000 Hours can help. Join their free newsletter, and they’ll send you an in-depth guide for free that will help you identify which global problems are most pressing and where you can have the biggest impact personally. It will also help you get new ideas for high impact careers or directions that help tackle these issues.*This episode is also brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life. Wealthfront will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim.*This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.*For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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